My Students’ Blog

Managing Children in Public Spaces

By Jacob Comer

I’d imagine that every person has witnessed an outburst of negative behavior in some sort of public setting. That could be in a supermarket, a mall, or, the most common, a classroom. From my personal experiences, these emotional outbursts are not handled in the most compelling way. These situations are handled in ways that never seem to fully fix the issue. They can range from secluding and isolation, to yelling and even physical repercussions for these behaviors. There are plenty of options that are less detrimental to a child’s mental health than the old ways that parents and teachers use to punish kids who act out. 

The Ways That Children Act Out

Children act out in various ways for many different reasons. Empowering Parents, an organization that facilitates parent coaching, says, “Their behavior may involve yelling, screaming, and tantrums. It may be angry faces and a disgusted tone, disrespectful remarks, and even cursing. Either way, the game they’re playing is using bad behavior to fix their problems and get what they want.” There are many different reasons for a child to act in this way, but in these particular situations they are getting exactly what they want. These types of occurrences often happen with parents or adults in public places, that range from the local supermarket, to the doctor’s office and even restaurants, But, where you see the most children acting out, is at school in a classroom where a teacher or other school aid has to maintain the situation. To learn more about these situations and how to deal with them visit the Empowering Parents website. 

What Acting Out Can Mean

Some people believe that children and young adults act out for many reasons such as to get attention, to get what they want, and even just because they are just a bad kid. In some situations that can be true, but there are more than enough studies that emphasize the idea of how past trauma in a child’s life can tend to lead to misbehavior in the classroom. In the article How Trauma Affects Kids In School by Carolina Miller she states, “We tend to think of trauma as the result of a frightening and upsetting event. But many children experience trauma through ongoing exposure, throughout their early development, to abuse, neglect, homelessness, domestic violence, or violence in their communities. And it’s clear that chronic trauma can cause serious problems with learning and behavior.” Kids that sit in a classroom without any trust for adults due to childhood trauma, which can range from neglect to abuse, have internal issues and tend to have trouble forming relationships with teachers and peers. They also struggle with self regulation, negative thinking, hypervigilance, and poor executive functioning. With these internal struggles within adolescents sitting in a classroom, you are going to have moments of misbehavior.  

“Traumatic events challenge an individual’s view of the world as a just, safe and predictable place.”

The Detrimental Ways That These Situations Are Dealt With
When these moments of outbursts of negative behavior occur, it seems that the first thought of an adult who is witnessing this is to punish the child. These punishments can include seclusion and isolation, revoking privileges, and even physical harm. These are not ways that you should treat a child who has internal problems that they need help working with. The punishments that have been used for as long as anyone can remember do not work in this day and age where we focus so much on mental health. A kid who is acting out in ways to gain attention from peers around them should never be isolated due to these actions. Isolation in a school setting ranges from being moved to a secluded section of the classroom, to detention,  suspension, and even expulsion. How can you take away these learning  opportunities from children that could be dealing with internal issues? What makes it okay to seclude and isolate a child who just needs a little encouragement and a conversation to try and fix the way that they act in class.

After countless years of teachers and parents alike responding negatively to negative behavior, there are now finally resources that are showing you how to change the response and to use positive reinforcement that can make more of an impact instead. Some of the best techniques to accomplish good behavior in a classroom can be found in  these steps from the website Responding to Misbehavior by Responsive Classroom: 

How to Correctly Manage Misbehavior 
Stop the misbehavior and reestablish positive behavior as quickly as possible.

• Maintain children’s dignity. 
• Develop children’s self-control and self-regulation skills. 
• Help children recognize and fix any harm caused by their mistakes. 
• demonstrate that rules help make the classroom a safe place where all can learn. 

Just by following some of these more positive tactics to manage bad behavior, instead of causing more problems to the situation, you can try and teach the adolescents skills they can use in the future. 

Just by using some of the information throughout this blog you can make a positive impact on a child’s misbehavior instead of continuing to create more of a problem by isolating or enabling the issue. I hope that you can learn a few different techniques from my blog to change the old ways that misbehavior in children was treated. 
Thank you for taking your time to read this and if you wish to learn more about this issue you can visit the website How School Discipline Can Affect Your Child’s Learning.